Is healthcare a right or a responsibility?

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Freddy said:
And if you want your own doctor? You pay hefty insurance premiums. If you can’t afford that then you still get a well qualifed doctor who will give you excellent care.
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No you don’t get excellent care. I know people who have gone to multiple doctors before finding one that they could work with. I have a mental disorder which, among other things, makes it extremely difficult to tolerate being touched. I have a gynecologist I have been going to for decades and this is a doctor who understands my problem and has a gentle manner that makes me feel safe.

I couldn’t just go to a different stranger each time, start all over each time, have to be touched by a brand new person each time, not knowing whether they are going to spend triple the amount of time with me to gradually make me comfortable with the touching. I don’t know how they will react when (not if) I freak out.

I could give plenty of other examples of people who developed good rapports with their doctors over years and decades. What a doctor learns about a patient she has known for 10, 20, 30 years cannot be duplicated by a stranger who just met you two seconds ago.
 
Not sure where you are but in Ontario there are several levels of care. First level is your family doctor(usually can get an appointment there within a week for whatever I need or see the on call in the evening for more urgent problems) OR can go to a walk in clinic and wait a few hours to see a doctor. If I need to see a specialist that’s where the months long wait can come in unless it’s urgent. It’s not allowed here to have private insurance for things covered. Only extras not covered. Also, I can call telehealth 24 hours a day to consult a nurse. Going to the ER will mean a long wait if not critical.
 
@Leek This is very similar to the European system.
 
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SugarMagnolia said:
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Freddy:
And if you want your own doctor? You pay hefty insurance premiums. If you can’t afford that then you still get a well qualifed doctor who will give you excellent care.
Click to expand...
No you don’t get excellent care. I know people who have gone to multiple doctors before finding one that they could work with. I have a mental disorder which, among other things, makes it extremely difficult to tolerate being touched. I have a gynecologist I have been going to for decades and this is a doctor who understands my problem and has a gentle manner that makes me feel safe.

I couldn’t just go to a different stranger each time, start all over each time, have to be touched by a brand new person each time, not knowing whether they are going to spend triple the amount of time with me to gradually make me comfortable with the touching. I don’t know how they will react when (not if) I freak out.

I could give plenty of other examples of people who developed good rapports with their doctors over years and decades. What a doctor learns about a patient she has known for 10, 20, 30 years cannot be duplicated by a stranger who just met you two seconds ago.
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If that’s what you want then you could pay the extra to get it. But it doesn’t mean that those who can’t afford it should go without.
 
I can’t pay extra. I get what insurance provides and don’t have an extra penny to spare. When you’re got a mental illness, you don’t exactly get a rich person’s job.

You rich people can’t see the world outside your mansions. Maybe you should walk a mile in the shoes of the less fortunate. or read the words of Jesus in the gospels.
 
SugarMagnolia said:
I can’t pay extra. I get what insurance provides and don’t have an extra penny to spare. When you’re got a mental illness, you don’t exactly get a rich person’s job.

You rich people can’t see the world outside your mansions. Maybe you should walk a mile in the shoes of the less fortunate. or read the words of Jesus in the gospels.
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I’m sorry, I’m not sure what you are proposing. I’m not even sure if you’re arguing for or against health care. Are you suggesting that everyone pays enough from their tax to pay for a system whereby everyone gets their own personal doctor? Or that there should be no universal health care so that only the rich can afford it?

I’m confused…
 
Freddy said:
Are you suggesting that everyone pays enough from their tax to pay for a system whereby everyone gets their own personal doctor?
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Yes. We already get to choose our doctors and develop life-long doctor-patient relationships with them. Why should this be taken away? The only difference would be that insurance should pay for the whole treatment and not just a percentage of the treatment. The payment comes out of our taxes.
 
SugarMagnolia said:
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Freddy:
Are you suggesting that everyone pays enough from their tax to pay for a system whereby everyone gets their own personal doctor?
Click to expand...
Yes. We already get to choose our doctors and develop life-long doctor-patient relationships with them. Why should this be taken away? The only difference would be that insurance should pay for the whole treatment and not just a percentage of the treatment. The payment comes out of our taxes.
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Who is trying to take it away? I think the proposal is to either maintain the staus quo (in the US) or increase the availablity of health care to those who can’t afford it.
 
Freddy said:
Who is trying to take it away? I think the proposal is to either maintain the staus quo (in the US) or increase the availablity of health care to those who can’t afford it.
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I hope they’re not going to take it away, but that’s how it is with other places like Canada and the UK.
 
Even in US now several practices have a certain number of drs and pas. You can pick who you want to see if you make an appointment in advance (for example for your annual) or if you need to see somebody in the practice specialized in a specific field (for example in the same ophthalmology practice you may need to see the retina or glaucoma specialist). If it is an appointment given at the last moment you usually will end up with the pa or with whoever is available that day.
 
SugarMagnolia said:
Rights are bestowed by the governing body, not nature, and they can be taken away by that same governing body.
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If I took this approach then abortion would be okay. Isn’t it a right the government grants to it’s citizens? Rather we have God-given rights that are enforced by the government(or at least should be)
God bless you! (Abortion is wrong btw)
 
RolandThompsonGunner said:
I meant that in the US at least, the Postal Service is pretty legally uncontroversial. No one really bangs on about it being socialism or government overreach or whatever.
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Ok, I guess I don’t know much about the legal landscape in the US with respect to postal. But apart from the opinion of lawyers, I don’t there’s any consensus that the government is particularly competent at delivering mail, or should be tasked with it. It’s a pretty arbitrary thing to load on the government when you think about it, as it has very little to do the basic government tasks of providing national security and enforcing contracts so that society can function. I’m skeptical that many people who aren’t lawyers or government would care if it simply ceased to operate.
RolandThompsonGunner said:
Maybe a better example is the military. The state forces you to contribute to the maintenance of an army through taxes, which then protects the country from external threats. No one really argues that this is an inappropriate service for the government to provide.
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Yes I would agree with that. Militias were commonly understood to be a proper function of government even in Jesus’s day. National postal service, not so much.
 
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Emeraldlady said:
Providing a safety net for the vulnerable is not ‘socialism’. It’s motivated by the common good based on the principle that all people are equal and valuable to the community.
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What one person sees as a “safety net” for the vulnerable another person sees as an exploitation of the vulnerable by trapping them in a system of dependence. Trapped people are not free people even if they prefer the trap to freedom. It is hard to see people suffer but sometimes a little suffering is what is needed to grow.
 
I think you are making use of an overwhelming exception to prove the general rule, which doesn’t follow. I’d grant that someone won’t choose to walk into a moving vehicle because they know they’ll get a free leg amputation and hospital care afterwards, but it doesn’t follow that they won’t knowingly hurt themselves in lesser ways, knowing that they will be mostly covered. Most of the economic strain on the medical industry isn’t due to caring for quadriplegics, but for much less extreme cases.
 
The article is a call for access. It is addressed at the global scale.
It seems that many of the posters, myself included, are posting from developed countries where access is available. From that basis, the discussion has shifted to ways of funding, and delivery platforms.
In the article, the Pope does not discuss either rights or responsibilities. He speaks of social justice and solidarity.
 
Socrates92 said:
Militias were commonly understood to be a proper function of government even in Jesus’s day.
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My point is I don’t think we’re obligated to model our own governments after what was customary in 1st century Palestine, and I don’t think Jesus’ silence on the question of, say, public libraries should be read as prohibiting them. You can think public healthcare shouldn’t exist because it’s not cost effective or it’s not prudent or it expands government too much or whatever. That’s perfectly fine. I just don’t think it makes sense to argue “well, Jesus never said we should have it, therefore by implication He was saying it’s wrong.”
 
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If you pay taxes to your nation then everything your governments provide is a RIGHT. Of course their are rules within this but the basic principal is we have the right to apply and governments have the right to assess accept or reject.
 
It should. The US is the only supposedly first world country where healthcare isn’t a right. But it should be.
 
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